Will BP Live it Down?

BP has become a favourite target for lobbyists, politicians and public-relations specialists.

In an article on the Wall Street Journal website, Dionne Searcey and Stephen Power say those “looking for a symbol of evil” are readily referring to the oil giant since April’s massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Some of BP’s ways of responding to the spill have made matters worse: “Seemingly insensitive statements by several BP executives, including one by the chairman calling the Gulf fisherman and others affected by the spill ‘small people,’ have only fueled the fire,” says the article.

Just as Exxon Mobil Corp. took a long while to overcome the taint of its 1989 oil spill in Alaska, the damage to BP’s name worsens every time BP is invoked by the public at large, Searcey and Power write. For example, despite that BP is a top buyer and supplier of corn-based ethanol in the U.S, The National Corn Growers Association’s recent TV ads depicted BP as the villain by showing the uncontained oil slick and the slogan, “Ethanol: Now is the time.”